Friday, July 28, 2006

Yesterday the trend of daily temperatures being over 100 degree was broken! It was a lovely day of mid to high 90's (ha!) But it did feel cool enough to spend more time with yarn.

I'm a very tactile person when it comes to yarn. Since I teach at Michaels, it's my obligation (snicker) to work with as many yarns as they carry. As you can guess, I spend loads of time in the yarn section.

A few months ago, I got Moda Dea Dream in 4 different colors - 2 skeins of white, and 1 each of pink, purple, and green (for the exact color names, click on the link). It's like working with cotton balls - very, very soft yarn.

I decided to make another scarf and hat set since both work up quickly.This is the scarf so far. It's being needle knitted but I think I'll do the hat on the Knifty Knitter with the same checkered design.

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It's never too hot to bead. The non-knitting time was spent designing beadwork. None are ready for pictures. But since a blog without pictures is just a letter, you need a bead picture!

This little guy demanded to be made last fall. He's drawn comments whenever he gets an "outing" and hangs out with the hummingbird when at home.

Shouldn't at least one of them be named Droopy? Reminds me of an Erma Bombeck quote - "I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes." (hehe)

Monday, July 24, 2006

This year’s vacation has been dubbed the “I wasn’t expecting that water” vacation.

In keeping with the bad luck we’ve had this year, our RV had a few issues. The first night out, we got cold water when we were expecting hot – water heater wasn’t working. A few days later, we got warm bottled water when we were expecting cold – the fridge went out. A couple of weeks later, we got water from the radiator when we weren’t expecting water at all – a hole in the radiator. Ah, well. Whoever says you can’t take it with you obviously wasn’t talking about bad luck.

Everything was repaired as we went along but it did require us to be flexible in our trip plans. And even with spending so much time in repair facilities, we managed to have a good time!

Some of the highlights from the past month –

Daughter has 18th birthday! She’s such a wonderful young lady and I’m so very proud of her. I can’t believe this is the same little baby who weighed 1 pound 5 ounces when she was born (micro preemie). Even with the disabilities she deals with, she’s a happy and loving person.

Getting there is always half the fun for us. This was the first RV trip for the newest members of our family. Bogart and Cagney’s big adventure!

We got to spend some time in our favorite national park - Glacier National Park in Montana.

This year, we leased a 4-wheel drive so that we could explore the Polebridge area. If you make it to the Polebridge Mercantile, try the cookies!

In the north west section of Glacer is Kintla Lake. Our PT Cruiser couldn't have made it through the dirt roads to get here. What a view! And it was cool enough to need long sleeves in July!

What’s a vacation without a notable eating establishment? My hubby had read that the Hot Rod Café in Post Falls, Idaho has the best hamburgers anywhere. Well folks, I agree! I normally do not complement restaurants on meat type entrees as I don’t really enjoy the taste of meat...however these burgers are fantastic!

I had hoped to find yarn shops along the way during this trip. But when I had an opportunity to shop – there either wasn’t one or they weren’t open (darn it!) However, there’s always a book store open somewhere and I find this little gem of a book.

When I had seen this book in the public library, I’d skipped over it. What a mistake! It’s wonderfully written (Ms. Zimmermann had a marvelous style of writing) as well as informative. This is a must read for the dedicated needle knitter!